Chris + Morgane Stapleton — Country’s Greatest Love Stories

Chris and Morgane Stapleton are living proof that married couples can work together and stay madly in love. Of course, it helps that the two have been together since the early 2000s, and developed a romance thanks to music.

In 2003, Morgane — then known as Morgane Hayes — was a musician and songwriter signed to Arista Nashville. She was friends with someone who worked at another publishing house, Sea Gayle Music, which just so happened to be where Chris Stapleton was signed.

"We’d hear the jingle of his keys as he walked down the hall, and we knew he was coming to play us whatever new song he had written,” Morgane told the Washington Post in 2015. “Eventually he asked me to write a song with him, and that ended up being our first date. We didn’t get much writing done that night." (Of course, since Morgane had suggested the writing date take place on Friday at 6PM, that's understandable.)

The Stapletons married in 2007. In a 2015 Rolling Stone profile, Morgane revealed that she secretly had the phrase "You Are My Sunshine," which refers to the iconic song the couple is fond of covering together, engraved in Chris' wedding band.

For the Stapletons, married life is intertwined with their careers: The couple is, of course, known for their smoldering live performances and duets, including on "Fire Away," an older song Morgane encouraged Chris to record for 2015's Traveller.

“It’s a very honest song, and that’s what I love about it,” Morgane tells the Washington Post. “It says what I feel like when I want to fight: Let’s just have at it and be real.”

It's not like they have a turbulent relationship, however: "Oh, we drive each other crazy once in a while,” Morgane adds in the same article. “But being without each other drives us even more crazy.”

That kind of camaraderie and chemistry have kept them going through tough times — including an ill-fated road trip in which the couple drove a gas-leaking 1979 Jeep Cherokee across the country — and recent good times: Stapleton becoming a breakout solo star after years of behind-the-scenes songwriting.

In October of 2017, Morgane announced she was pregnant with twins. (The couple has two other children.) Having such a huge brood will no doubt make touring even more exciting — although they wouldn't have it any other way.

"We’re married so we hold each other accountable,” Stapleton told the New York Times in 2017. “We can lift each other up on bad nights, kind of give each other a wink when we screw up or do something funny."